A British Point of View: Paul Heyman; Genius and Savior

Seeing as a few shows have taken place recently, I thought I would summarise my thoughts as well as express how one man has saved the past two weeks of WWE Television:

Royal Rumble:

The Rumble was a good solid show. Returns from Chris Jericho, The Godfather and Goldust were all welcome surprises. It seems that my prediction for John Cena to win was unfortunately accurate but with the career he’s had we all knew he’d have to win another one again at some point. I, like everyone else was disappointed that WWE decided to give The Rock the WWE Championship but I also understand what they are doing from a business mind set. WWE will always cater to the casual fans and making The Rock Champion was always on the cards from early last year. It’s a shame because WWE had the opportunity to make something special with Punk’s reign but now it will be just left as a number. Let’s hope that WWE stay hot on CM Punk because he’s still the fresh guy within this business and doesn’t need to be put in poor feuds whilst Cena and Rock duke it out.

RAW Following the Rumble:

This is where I get annoyed. WWE gave The Rock the WWE Championship, fair enough. They bring in ratings bigger than any other time this year and what kind of show do they produce? Pure Garbage. The fact that by this point I was on my 6th hour straight of wrestling as I had watched the Rumble, gone on to VOWLive.com for the Voice of Wrestling and was now watching RAW took its toll. Maybe 7 hours is too much to have done in one sitting but judging from everyone else’s reaction to this show on Twitter I didn’t feel I was in the minority.

On the plus side WWE did produce segments which were good with CM Punk and the return of Brock Lesnar but they were both at the start and the end of the show with over 2 hours of rubbish in-between. It took 144 minutes before we got the first real wrestling match and by this point I was attempting to fix matchsticks to my eyelids as it was 3:20am. Tensai in underwear? Khali Singing? Ryback telling jokes? I thought I had all I could take but then we got the epic ‘Tale of the Tape’ between John Cena and Fred Flintstone. All I needed here was Mike Tenay to give me a run down before I threw myself from my window.

A nice touch was the announcement of Trish Stratus going in to the WWE Hall of Fame. Trish put in unbelievable amounts of work for the WWE and is more than deserving of this honour. Well done Trish!

In reality though, the only saving grace to this RAW was Paul Heyman. Paul’s pleas of “Please leave Vince, JUST LEAVE!” to Mr. McMahon were priceless and his “Oh My God! What did you DO!?” reaction to the F5 simply showed how much impact Paul can make to any story he is involved in.

This Monday’s RAW:

Maybe I’d had more sleep on this one but I didn’t feel anywhere near as frustrated with the show. We had matches and we had far less comical segments. We did however have WWE shamelessly plugging the WWE app with a full demonstration on how to install it and run it? Why on earth do WWE take every fan to be a complete moron? ‘I have a smartphone and I have never installed an app on it ever! I cannot believe that WWE have shown me the way of the future. I always wondered what everyone else was on about when they said download our app but now that WWE have demonstrated it to me on numerous occasions I now feel confident being in the 21st Century.’ Sigh. Next week we’ll have The Great Khali telling me how to Tweet and Hornswoggle explaining the wonders of Farmville on Facebook. Either that or in the summer months when Brock decides to take more time off he can demonstrate how to use Tout when adopting his ‘When in doubt, quit by Tout’ policy!

Sarcasm aside the segment with Brock Lesnar and The Miz was yet again stolen by a wonderful performance from Paul Heyman. As soon as Miz mentioned ECW I literally gleamed when Heyman’s face turned sinister. I was instantly hoping we would get Lesnar’s music hit with that look because it sent a chill down my spine. Paul manipulates every emotion he can to enhance the story and characters around him. He went from sinister to being frightened of Brock’s relentless rage in a single swoop. Lesnar heavily battered Miz and unprofessionally threw a chair at him when he was on the outside of the Ring. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall backstage after that segment because I cannot imagine that WWE or Miz being impressed with Brock’s frantic actions as it could have seriously caused harm. It’s an awkward balance because we love Brock’s aggression but also don’t want it to cause problems within the organisation and hurt fellow competitors.

One small note which frustrated me was John Cena feeling the need to again call himself an underdog if he faced CM Punk or The Rock at WrestleMania when he challenges for the WWE Championship. The sheer fact that John Cena considered himself to be an underdog nearly made me feel the need to pick up the WWE Encyclopaedia just to check the credentials of the 10 time WWE Champion for accuracy and praying the past 10 years has just been a bad dream.

WWE also announced that Bruno Sammartino was going to be inducted in to the WWE Hall of Fame. It’s nice to see that Triple H has finally won round the wrestling legend and he can add another piece of legitimacy to the WWE Hall of Fame. Bruno is without doubt one of the biggest names to grace wrestling and his career should be celebrated honourably. Congratulations Mr. Sammartino.

I thought the closing segment with the Shield was a bit weak and the odd impression of Bane from Brad Maddox was a bit out there but overall at least it felt like the show was moving again.

Hopefully WWE will actually realise that WrestleMania is around the corner and some compelling television will make its way to our screens soon. Either that or I’m going to be forced to write about how Taz has joined the Aces and Eights and Mike Tenay is obsessed with giving me the ‘X Factors’ of his decision.

You can contact me on beansontoastuk@msn.com, through the comments section below or get in touch on Twitter via @BeansOnToastUK.